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General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) www.sfgups.org 415-338-1908
San Francisco State University

Palestinian Mural in Jeopardy!

In April 2005, the General Union of Palestine Students at San Francisco State University proposed something revolutionary, to begin a process of implementing a mural paying tribute to Edward Said and Palestinian culture on the University campus. This is the first mural of its kind at a university in the United States. After over a year of painstaking efforts by the mural committee to follow the established process, the President of San Francisco State University, Robert A. Corrigan, prematurely denied the mural just before the final stage. It is 2007 and the mural is in jeopardy and needs your immediate help.

The SF State president, Robert Corrigan claims the mural represents a “culture of violence” and “hatred toward Jews.” He is saying that the Palestinian house key and Handala are offensive but he does not explain why or what to support his claim. He allowed other murals up on the Cesar Chavez Student Center, such as the Malcolm X mural, the Cesar Chavez mural, the Filipino Mural, the Pan Asian and Pacific Islander Mural that have representation of refugees and resistance to colonial occupation. However the administration has been trying to stop our mural since day one before they knew anything about it.

Take action now by signing the latest online petition, writing a letter to President Corrigan from you or your organization, or financially support the legal process. President Corrigan has to understand that our mural is not just a couple of students in the back of a classroom that he can just shut up, but that the whole community supports the mural and all its elements including the Palestinian house key and Handala!

[Handala is “an iconic symbol of Palestinian identify” and resistance to Israeli occupation. See the Wikipedia article]

[The Handala image drawn by the students shows him holding a Palestinian house key in one hand, and a fountain pen in the other. In a previous version he had a pen in the shape of a sword, to invoke the saying and the spirit of Edward Siad “the pen is mightier than the sword.” The latest version removes any ambiguity by showing him holding a fountain pen.]

The Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End Iraq War Funding Launches February 5th

WASHINGTON – February 5 –

WHAT: Social justice advocates will launch the Occupation Project, an eight week long campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience to end funding for the Iraq war. Concerned citizens all over the country will begin occupying their representatives office, pressuring them to end funding for the Iraq war.

Featured speakers at the Washington, D.C. launch include: Kathy Kelly (Executive Director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and just returned from two months living and working with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan); Gael Murphy (Co-founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Steering Committee of United for Peace and Justice); Gordon Clark (Communications Director of Peace Action and Convener of National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance), Garett Reppenhagen (Chairman of the Board of Iraq Veterans Against the War) and Ellen Barfield (Board Member of Veterans for Peace).

Following the press event, campaign participants will commence the first Congressional office occupation of the national campaign at Senator McCain’s office. Gael Murphy of CODEPINK states, “We are starting this campaign of ‘extralegal lobbying’–nonviolent civil disobedience–at the offices of our Representatives and Senators who refuse to publicly pledge their vote against Bush’s request for an additional $100 billion for the war in Iraq.”

“The U.S. war in Iraq has created a humanitarian catastrophe, with Iraqis forced to flee for safety to Jordan–only to be rejected and forgotten by the international community. We owe an obligation to Iraqis: to stop funding the war and to fully fund war reparations to Iraq so they might be able to rebuild their country after these past16 years of economic and military warfare,” says Kathy Kelly, Co-Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and recently returned from Iraq.

WHERE: Press Conference Launch at the United Methodist Building, 100 Maryland Ave NE, Washington, D.C. followed by additional press availability at the first Congressional office occupation of the national campaign at Senator McCain’s office, SR 241.

WHO: The Occupation Project is being organized by Voices for Creative Non-violence, CODEPINK, United for Peace & Justice, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Peace Action affiliates, Gold Star Families for Peace and many local peace and justice groups. Local campaigns are being organized in 20+ states: New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Maine, Oregon, Alabama, Arizona, California, Washington and Alaska.

FURTHER INFORMATION: May be found in the Occupation Project section on the websites of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) and of CODEPINK (www.codepinkal

On the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1974, a mob of 200 enraged whites, many of them
students, closed in on a bus filled with black students that was trying to
pull away from the local high school. The people in the mob were in a
high-pitched frenzy. They screamed racial epithets and bombarded the bus
with rocks and bottles. The students on the bus were terrified.

When a shot was heard, the kids on the bus dived for cover. But it was a
13-year-old white boy standing near the bus, not far from his mother, who
toppled to the ground with a bullet wound in his head. The boy, a freshman
named Timothy Weber, died a few hours later.

That single shot in this rural town about 25 miles up the Mississippi River
from New Orleans set in motion a tale of appalling injustice that has lasted
to the present day.

Destrehan was in turmoil in 1974 over school integration. The Supreme
Court?s historic desegregation ruling was already 20 years old ? time
enough, the courts said, for Destrehan and the surrounding area to comply.
But the Ku Klux Klan was still welcome in Destrehan in those days, and David
Duke, its one-time imperial wizard, was an admired figure. White families in
the region wanted no part of integration.

When black students were admitted to Destrehan High, they were greeted with
taunts, various forms of humiliation and violence. Some of the black
students fought back, and in the period leading up to the shooting there had
been racial fights at a football game and inside the school.

While the Weber boy was being taken to a hospital, authorities ordered the
black students off the bus and searched each one. The bus was also
thoroughly searched. No weapon was found, and there was no evidence to
indicate that the shot had come from the bus. The bus driver insisted it had
not come from the bus, but from someone firing at the bus.

One of the black youngsters, a 16-year-old named Gary Tyler, was arrested
for disturbing the peace after he talked back to a sheriff?s deputy ? one of
the few deputies in St. Charles Parish who was black. It may have been young
Tyler?s impudence that doomed him. He was branded on the spot as the
designated killer.

(Later, at a trial, the deputy, Nelson Coleman, was asked whose peace had
been disturbed by Mr. Tyler?s comments. ?Mine,? he replied.)

Matters moved amazingly fast after the shooting. Racial tension gave way to
racial hysteria. A white boy had been killed and some black had to pay. Mr.
Tyler, as good a black as any, was taken to a sheriff?s substation where he
was beaten unmercifully amid shouted commands that he confess. He would not.

It didn?t matter. ‘n just a little over a year he would be tried, convicted
by an all-white jury and sentenced to death by electrocution.

The efficiency of the process was chilling. Evidence began to miraculously
appear. Investigators ?found? a .45-caliber pistol. Never mind that there
were no fingerprints on it and it turned out to have been stolen from a
firing range used by the sheriff?s deputies. (Or that it subsequently
disappeared as conveniently as it was found.) The authorities said they
found the gun on the bus, despite the fact that the initial search had
turned up nothing.

The authorities found witnesses who said that Mr. Tyler had been the gunman.
Never mind that the main witness, a former girlfriend of Mr. Tyler?s, was a
troubled youngster who had been under the care of a psychiatrist and had a
history of reporting phony crimes to the police, including a false report of
a kidnapping. She and every other witness who fingered Mr. Tyler would later
recant, charging that they had been terrorized into testifying falsely by
the police.

A sworn affidavit from Larry Dabney, who was seated by Mr. Tyler on the bus,
was typical. He said his treatment by the police was the ?scariest thing?
he?d ever experienced. ?They didn?t even ask me what I saw,? he said. ?They
told me flat out that I was going to be their key witness. … They told me
I was going to testify that I saw Gary with a gun right after I heard the
shot and that a few minutes later I had seen him hide it in a slit in the
seat. That was not true. I didn?t see Gary or anybody else in that bus with
a gun.?

Mr. Tyler was spared electrocution when the Supreme Court declared
Louisiana?s death penalty unconstitutional. But in many ways he has in fact
paid with his life. He?ll turn 50 this year in the state penitentiary at
Angola, where he is serving out his sentence of life without parole for the
murder of Timothy Weber.

Bush’s mercenaries thrive in Iraq
President relies on thousands of private soldiers with little oversight, a troubling example of outsourcing of U.S. military
January 29, 2007
Jeremy Scahill

As U.S. President George W. Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address last Tuesday, five American families received news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq.

But in this case, the slain were neither “civilians,” as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq.

The company made headlines in early 2004 when four troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallujah – two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge.

That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Fallujah and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.

Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become.

Last Tuesday, one of the company’s helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad’s most violent areas.

The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater’s $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company’s initial no-bid contract to guard administrator Paul Bremer in Iraq.

Current U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men’s bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of “the fog of war.”

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his speech. But he did address the issue that has made the war’s privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy – the need for more troops.

The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years.

He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

“Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them,” Bush declared.

This is precisely what the administration already has done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs.

Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory. Iraq is its Frankenstein monster. Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest “force” in Iraq.

At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors there, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What’s more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.

The president’s proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces.

In early 2005, Prince – a major bankroller of the president and his allies – pitched the idea at a military conference of a “contractor brigade” to supplement the official military.

“There’s consternation in the (Pentagon) about increasing the permanent size of the army,” Prince declared. Officials “want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier.” He added: “We could do it certainly cheaper.”

And Prince is not just a man with an idea; he is a man with his own army. Blackwater began in 1996 with a private military training camp “to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing.”

Today, its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House.

It has secured a status as the elite Praetorian Guard for the global war on terror, with the largest private military base in the world, a fleet of 20 aircraft and 20,000 soldiers at the ready.

From Iraq and Afghanistan to the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans to meetings with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger about responding to disasters in California, Blackwater envisions itself as the FedEx of defence and homeland security operations.

Such power in the hands of one company, run by a bankroller of the president, embodies the “military-industrial complex” president Dwight Eisenhower warned against in 1961.

Further privatizing America’s war machine – or inventing new back doors for military expansion with fancy names like the Civilian Reserve Corps – would represent a devastating blow to the future of American democracy.

Jeremy Scahill, a fellow at the Nation Institute, a New York-based think-tank dedicated to the promotion of free speech, is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. This article first ran in the Los Angeles Times.

On January 12, 2007 Google has stopped indexing Uruknet.info as a news source

(The latest Uruknet article included in the Google News index is Iraqi Children “Play” Civil War, January 12, 2007).

We wrote to Google News and this is their reply:

Hi Vincenzo,

Thank you for your message. We apologize for the confusion, we’ve reviewed your site again and are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We appreciate your willingness to provide your articles to us, and we will log your site for future consideration. Thank you for your interest in Google News.

They are unable? and for which reason? Of course there isn’t any technical reason, because Google.news have been indexing Uruknet up to five days ago and although old pages are still available, there has been no update since then. The only “technical reason” is censorship.

We rewrote to Google.news and their reply was even more cryptic:

Thank you for your note. Although we’re unable to provide specific information at this time, we sincerely appreciate your interest in Google News and your willingness to provide us with your content. Please be assured that we’ll keep your site on file should we be able to crawl it in the future.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards, The Google Team

Of course, it is a lie: In our logs it seems that you still crawl Uruknet, but the articles do not appear on Google.news.

We re-rewrote to Google.news and we didn’t get any answer at all. We ignore the reason for which Google has manipulated the rankings for Uruknet , but we think the exclusion of alternative media through search engines results is government/corporate tactics to harness the free flow of information on the Internet. Being banned by Google.news is obviously a serious threat to a news website’s existence.

This isn’t the first time that Google discontinues indexing Uruknet. On February 18, 2005, Google.news removed Uruknet.info as a news source, apparently thanks to Michelle Malkin’s protestations only to reinstate them – following many complaints sent in by our readers.

On June 4, 2005 both Google.com and Google.news dropped Uruknet again without explanation: and in this case too Google reinstated Uruknet only because of complaint messages from our readers.

We must add that Google’s censorship unintentionally occurs in a particularly critical period for our website. Uruknet has been under hacking attacks since September 2005. These attacks increase whenever there are important events from Iraq. Since this past summer, when a great number of attacks were carried out against Uruknet, we have been moving our servers and spending lots of time, money and energies in order to prevent these attacks and to repair the damages. Since the assassination of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the attacks have increased again and last week they managed to destroy our main server and other servers we use for mirroring websites.

As our readers know, we never carried out campaigns neither for fund-raising nor for any other kind of aid. Although we’ve been able to provide, in spite of sacrifice, for maintenance and safeguard of Uruknet and mirroring websites, and although we succeeded, notwithstanding such a great deal of problems, to face all damages caused by hacking attacks, now Google’s censorship risks to be a blow too hard to ward off.

We therefore kindly request our readers to write to Google asking Uruknet.info to be reinstated as a news source.

A few hours ago, we asked our readers to send their complaint messages to ” source-suggestions@google.com ”

Now google.news claims that the address source-suggestions@google.com is no longer active. When one of our readers sends google.news a complaint letter for having stopped indexing uruknet,
he receives the following automated response from google:

But four days ago google.news did reply us from the same email address: so on 16 January 2006 the address ” source-suggestions@google.com ” surely was active.

Messaggio Originale ——–

Oggetto: Re: [#81255140] Re-inserting uruknet.info into google-news

*Data: * *Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:24:43 -0800*

*Da: * *Google Help source-suggestions@google.com*

A: enzo@uruknet.eu

Hi Vincenzo,

Thank you for your message. We apologize for the confusion, we’ve reviewed your site again and are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We appreciate your willingness to provide your articles to us, and we will log your site for future consideration.

Thank you for your note. Although we’re unable to provide specific information at this time, we sincerely appreciate your interest in Google News and your willingness to provide us with your content. Please be assured that we’ll keep your site on file should we be able to crawl it in the future.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards,

The Google Team

We therefore strongly suspect that google.news “source-suggestions@google.com” has put a filter on the word “uruknet”.

We made some test, and we made sure that if someone sends
to source-suggestions@google.com an email message
without the word “uruknet”, google news doesn’t reply that the address is inactive.

Please Froward far and wide, post on every appropriate
blog and list-serve.

March in solidarity with students and youth from
across the country on Saturday January 27th in D.C.

Join the Campus Anti-War Network, Members of SDS, and
World Can’t Wait in this Unified Youth and Student
contingent.

The final meeting place for the unified student and
youth contingent will be on the steps of the
Smithsonian Institute at 11 AM. It’s the red brick
building on the mall, next to Hirshorn, and near the
Air and Space Museum. The address is 900 Jefferson
Drive SW.

For a visual representation please see the following
link, note that the UFPJ rallying point is on the Mall
between 3rd and 7th. The Smithsonian is right across
the street, we will all congregate together and then
head over to the rally as a strong and unified
contingent.

The closest Metro strop is the “Smithsonian” Metro on
the blue/orange lines. As you exit the metro you will
probably be in the middle of a large demonstration (I
believe it has two exists, one drops you off on
Independence, the other in the middle of the park),
and you can also check the street signs or ask anyone
around for directions should you need them.
Iowa for example will be riding the Metro in from
Shady Grove and will be getting off at Gallery Place –

Chinatown, which drops us off 6 blocks north of the
mall on 7th street. Not a bad walk.
Troops Out Now!
See you in D.C
Chris Schwartz
Coordinating Committee of the Campus Anti-War Networkhttp://www.campusantiwar.net
University of Northern Iowa Students for Social Justice

Rally and March information and some after march events:

11:30 a.m.— Rally on the National Mall, between 3rd and 7th streets.
Speakers include Jesse Jackson, California representative Maxine
Waters, Ohio representative Dennis Kucinich, actress Rhea Perlman,
Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, and Bob Watada, father of Lt.
Ehren Watada, the first military officer to refuse deployment in Iraq,
now facing court-martial.

After the United for Peace and Justice March on Washington, join Anthony Arnove
(Voices of a People’s History of the United States) and special guests including
Kelly Dougherty, co-founder and Chair of the board of directors of Iraq Veterans
Against the War, to celebrate the paperback release of his book Iraq: The Logic
of Withdrawal. Speakers will address what is next in the US occupation of Iraq as
well as why the troops should come home now. Sponsored by Haymarket Books
and Busboys and Poets.

9 p.m.— Dance party with Code Pink at Busboys and Poets, 14th Street and V NW

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007 in a discussion at 7pm
Scott Ritter will address US war against Iran
at the Friends Meeting House, on Woolman Hill
Keets Road, off 5 & 10 1/2 mile south of Greenfield,
in Deerfield, MA. The meeting house is wheelchair
accessible, for the discussion.

Coming from some distance?
Reservations are available online for the discussion at 7PM
($10+) or for the dinner and discussion. ($50)
We plan to confirm your reservation by email or phone
by 3pm Wednesday.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine, former U.N. weapons inspector
on the ground in Iraq for seven years, and author of “Target Iran,
The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change.”
During the 1991 Gulf War Ritter was a US Marine working on missile
use for General Norman Schwartzkopf. More recently Ritter
traveled to Iran for a view from inside. He offers both a military
analysis and a civil response to the US threats. This event is
sponsored by Traprock & Woolman Hill Conference Center to help take
U.S. plans for using nuclear weapons, and for conventional attacks
against Iran, off the table!

Traprock Peace Center will video and audio tape the
discussion in full and gives permission to use files from
our website on radio with attribution; and for free distribution
with attribution. Thanks for sharing the news.
————————–

2. How Congress Can Stop the Iran Attack
3. WAR CRIMES REPORT, IN ENGLISH & ARABIC
4. After March Event – January 27th in DC
5. ON THE STREET – Freedom of Assembly?
6. Our State of the Union – Calling ALL HANDS, MCTV
Thank you Dance Spree – benefit dance Friday, Feb. 16
7. “Weapons of the Spirit” in Amherst
8. Contribute to WAGE PEACE
– Youth Peacemaker Award Nominations

2. How Congress Can Stop the Iran Attack
or be complicit in nuclear war crimes
By Jorge Hirsch, Sat, 20 Jan. 2007
An Excerpt from Information Clearing House,

” … Congress could pass a law making a nuclear attack on a
non-nuclear nation in the absence of Congressional authorization
illegal. In so doing, Congress would effectively be preventing Bush
from launching any attack against Iran without its authorization,
thus reclaiming its broader constitutionally assigned duties. Because
Bush will not dare putting 150,000 American lives in Iraq at risk of
Iranian retaliation without having the nuclear option on the table.
By removing the nuclear option from the Bush toolkit, Congress
would be forcefully imposing its will and that of the American
people on an administration gone mad.

If Congress chooses not to face the fact that US military action
against Iran is likely to lead to the first US use of nuclear weapons
since Nagasaki, each one of its members will share responsibility
for the nefarious chain of events that is likely to follow, and
should be preparing to face his/her very own nuclear Nuremberg trial….”

See the full text from the “Information Clearing House Blog” web site,
Thanks to John Staley of Williamstown for sending this reference.
http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/31/1/

3. WAR CRIMES REPORT,
NOW IN ENGLISH & ARABIC

Refuse to be ‘good German?’
If you’re going to Washington this week-end,
or if you’re staying close to home, please consider
printing and sharing a copy of the War Crimes Report.

Congratulations to all colleagues who published this reference —
in English in October, & now in Arabic, JANUARY 17, 2006.
Emergency funding can help print multiple copies for distribution in DC!

“U.S. War Crimes in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability” was
published on October 11, 2006 by ten organizations concurrently.
The report is now fully accessible by Iraqis and other Arabic
speakers in the Middle East.

“We are making ‘U.S. War Crimes in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability’
available in Arabic because we want to increase its accessibilty to the
people of Iraq so that they may have knowledge of the scope and
illegality of certain U.S. conduct there,” said Nick Mottern, Director
of ConsumersforPeace.org. “We hope that this will assist the Iraqi
people in preventing further war crimes and in getting reparations
for what has been done.”

See the Arabic language edition, available for free download as a pdf file:

After the United for Peace and Justice March on Washington,
join us in celebrating the paperback release of Arnove’s book
‘Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal’. Speakers will address what’s next
and why the troops should come home now. Sponsored by
Haymarket Books and Busboys and Poets. Congratulaitons to
U-Mass students filling two buses to DC.

5. ON THE STREET
See you in Washington?
See you on the streets!

Everywhere people are talking, sometimes honking.
Everywhere it’s a movement if we make it so.

Sandra Boston, Eve Brown Waite, Suzanne Carlson, Mary Siano,
Bob McCormick, Shel Ball, Gaella Elwell, Kay Fern, Annie Hassett, Eve,
Maesha(?) and a few other friends shared a vision and braved the cold
>From 4:30-5:30 Tues-Friday! Thousands of drivers caught our drift.
We could see people writing down the number for Congress, &
putting it in cell phones.

“Honk for PEACE!” ”Call a HALT” & “Bring them ALL home.”
You should have heard the support, as we crossed with the light,
each night on Main Street.

– Freedom of Assembly –
Since we want change, we are changing our venues.
During lunch hour today, Jan. 23, John Graves and I
held a bright banner with the number for Congress,
on a wide sidewalk at 91 Main St. in Greenfield.
A policeman, Mr. Odam instructed me that anyone demonstrating
in Greenfield needs a permit. I disagreed, saying I have been informed
that the town asks for permits for demonstrations of more that 10
people, but in general, the Constitution is my permit for freedom of
assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He warned
that I may be summoned.

Want to be OUT with the number for Congress? 202 224-3121

Call until ~6 pm–the switchboard operator will connect you.
Ask for the office of ANY member of Congress.

The White House comment line is 202 456-1111.
If you call as though on a rotary phone, you can speak to someone.

6. Our State of the Union

Please comment on your closing schools,
increased demands for home heating assistance,
or other local accounting. Date proposed, Jan. 31, 5-6pm
or Feb. 1, 7-8PM. Volunteers can tape you at Montague
Community TV, (in the Crocker Building across from the
Shady Glen and Town Hall in Turners Falls, a.k.a. Great Falls).
To weigh in, or volunteer — 413-773-7427.

Other productions pending include a Forum on Impeachment,
with Carl Doerner, and Witness Against Torture, perhaps at GCTV.

Committees are forming. Calling all hands.

Calling all dancers. Dance Spree will organize a benefit for Traprock
in Northampton for Friday Feb.16. Dance Spree is on the fourth floor
above Fitzwilly’s. Any donations over $4 can go to Traprock.
There is an elevator. Come buy a T-shirt or decorate one.
Be my valentine. 413 773-7427

Or meet your neighbors at a pot-luck or a
committee meeting here by the woodstove.
Watch the calendar, or call to pitch in.
Name your elixir to salve the trauma of war.
To sacrifice ~~ to make sacred.

7. Wednesday, Feb. 7, 7pm, see
“Weapons of the Spirit”

Produced and directed by Pierre Sauvage.
The next Wide-Angle Film to be shown in Amherst
reveals the defiance of the people in Le Chambon,
a town in France that hid 5,000 people from the Nazis.
The director was a child at the time he was protected there,
in an oasis of peace, in a conspiracy of goodness.

The Nacul Center is at 592 Main Street, Amherst,
1/2 mile east of Pleasant Street at the corner of N. Whitney.
Fully accessible, no charge for admission.

8. Contribute to
WAGE PEACE

Massachusetts neighbors are expected to pay $7.5 billion for
nuclear weapons & nuclear war in 2007. Supporters have contributed
about $15,000 so far in large and small amounts, toward a goal of
$100,000 for moving & this movement by June 1.

Soon we’ll prepare for youth Peace Maker Awards with
the Interfaith Council. One page letters describing worthy initiatives
by youths living in Franklin Co. MA are due in April. Send or pledge
the amount you spend on coffee or tea? Smell peace brewing?

Or make a contribution to honor yourself, Matthew Leighton, or the
next generation. Bit by bit, every contribution counts. Your words of
endorsement count!

Gifts of property would be most welcome!!! Woolman Hill, Touchstone Farm
& Yoga Center, Sirius Community, and the Peace Pagoda have shown us that
land is wonderful foundation for enduring efforts, and building community.
Add dedication and sacrifice, many hands and many minds.

Please download, print and distribute these reports and forward these links.

A message from Sunny Miller, Traprock’s Executive Director:

“Some may be concerned that translating these realities into Arabic will increase hostilities. In fact people in Iraq know these things and our admitting to them and objecting to them with transparency can increase understanding. Most importantly, addressing these wrongs through legal and nonviolent action increases hope that one day soon the corporate plunder and military mayhem will end! Soldiers can return to their sworn duty to uphold the constitution, rather submit to illegal orders. In the wake of Martin Luther King’s birthday I have to speak truth to power. I urge you to print the War Crimes Report and take it with you. It’s our duty to all the children of this Earth. When we recognize reality, we can begin to change it. Veterans, parents, students, teachers, doctors, nurses, … all of us are needed to right these wrongs!”

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — Running the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant for 20 years beyond when its license is due to expire would not harm the environment, staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say in a preliminary report.

The environmental impact statement is required as Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear seeks approval to extend the plant’s life through 2032.

Any environmental problems that would result from extending the license beyond its current 2012 expiration are “not so great that preserving the option of license renewal for energy planning decision makers would be unreasonable,” the NRC staff wrote.

A nuclear watchdog group argued that the NRC report neglected that continued operation would mean that nuclear waste would have to continue accumulating at the plant’s site in Vernon along the Connecticut River.

“Thats not something the people of the region signed up for when the plant was built,” said Ray Shadis of the New England Coalition. “If you operate the plant for another 20 years its reasonable to assume an incremental increase in that pollution.”

“It is going to be a lasting legacy of radioactive pollution on that riverbank,” Shadis said.

But the NRC staff said electricity now provided by Yankee will continue to be needed beyond the license expiration and conservation cannot replace it. Alternative technologies also aren’t available to replace Yankee’s current power output, the NRC said.

The preliminary report also suggested six things Yankee could do to improve safety in the event of an accident, but the NRC would not require them because they’re not not directly related to the aging of the plant.

Entergy has implemented the safety equipment and procedures it considers cost-beneficial, said spokesman Robert Williams.

The NRC also said it would hold two public forums in Brattleboro on Jan. 31 to hear from the public about the final report it is preparing for release in August.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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